The Nikon D600 is essentially the D7000 with a larger sensor, reflex mirror and viewfinder prism added. The D600 isn't much bigger or heavier, and adds much more technical performance if you're splitting pixels or shooting at high ISOs.

Except for a little more size and weight, they otherwise pretty much look and handle the same.

Flash sync is a tiny bit slower in the D600, but it's only a third of a stop slower than any other current DSLR and the same as the Canon 5D Mark III, so no complaints from me. Give me 1/500 sync and I'd want it, but 1/250 is the same thing as 1/200 in actual use.

The weirdest thing is that the larger-format D600 essentially also shares the smaller AF sensor of the D7000, so it appears much smaller in the finder of the D600, covering only a smaller portion of the center of the FX image with the same 39 DX AF sensors.

The biggest annoyance is that the size of the region seen by the sea of AF sensors appears smaller in the D600. Nikon is using essentially the same AF detector in each of these cameras, but not scaling it up for the larger format in the FX D600, so all the AF zones are pretty much stuck in the center of the D600. Personally, I always seem to need to focus on something just outside the area covered by AF sensors with my existing cameras, so the D600 will bug me more. So what? Half the time all I use is the center sensor anyway.

FX versus DX is the big question between these two. The real reason it matters is that the finders are far bigger in FX cameras. Yes, rated finder magnifications may be similar, but remember that the FX frame has over twice as much area as a DX frame, so the finders are much bigger in any FX camera. The bigger finder is the real reason to prefer the D600 over the D7000, as well as the fact that you can use all of Nikon's old and classic FX lenses to their fullest potential on the D600, while you'll really want to use new DX lenses on the D7000.

While I'll be showing all sorts of technical image details from my lab as I add to this page that will show all sorts of differences, honestly for actual use, the images are 99% the same for actual picture taking! If you're a tweaker who spends his time looking at highly magnified images or shoots in light so bad that you use ISO 25,600 and other fringe activities, yes, the D600 will look better than the D7000, but for 99% of the pictures that actually matter, the only real difference will be that the D600 images will have slightly less depth of field, all else being similar.

Is the D600 worth more than double the price of the D7000? Well, if you're a full-time shooter like myself, it is, but if you do this as a hobby and money matters, of course it's not worth it if you have to ask. See Is It Worth It for details.

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